Around 100 million barrels of oils are used by human civilisation per day in 2011. The amount of fossil fuels burnt in one year by human civilisation is equivalent to the amount of carbon sequestered by the earth over a 3 million year period.

Water is an essential input for food production. CSIRO Land and Water scientists in Australia have used precision weighing systems to measure water use by various crops, and the yield from the crops. The following approximate figures were revealed:

To produce one kilogram of oven dry wheat grain, it takes 715 - 750 litres of water

For 1 kg maize, 540 - 630 litres

For 1 kg soybeans, 1650 - 2200 litres

For 1 kg paddy rice, 1550 litres

For 1 kg beef, 50,000 - 100,000 litres

For 1 kg clean wool, 170,000 litres

[edit]Coal electricity generators use one-third of Melbourne's annual water consumption

Latrobe Valley generators use about 125 billion litres of water a year - one-third of Melbourne's annual consumption - and have asked the government for access to a larger volume and more guaranteed supplies.

Goldman Sachs have predicted that in 2015 oil will cost US $200 a barrel. In 2015 Australia will be importing 80% of oil mostly from the middle east. That is a $66 billion oil import bill. This will eclipse Australia's total coal export revenue, both metallurgical and steaming coal.

There were 374 excess deaths over what would be expected during the heatwave in Victoria, Australia from 26 January to 1 February 2009, compared to the same period in previous year(s). The results of this analysis have shown that there was substantial morbidity and mortality related to the heatwave, with associated demands on health services. The greatest number of deaths occurred in those 75 years or older, representing a 64% increase.

[edit]China closes down coal-fired power stations and India commits to solar

In the past three years from 2006 to 2009 the Chinese have closed down more than 54 gigawatts of inefficient coal-fired generating capacity - equivalent to closing all of Australia's coal-fired power stations twice over.

India just decided to increase its solar power capacity from near zero to 20 gigawatts by 2020 - that's more solar power than is currently produced worldwide.

[edit]Giant Nomura jellyfish in Japan may be attributed to climate change

Giant Nomura jellyfish in Japan have appeared in 2009. They have:

sunk a fishing trawler when many were caught in its nets

caused an estimated loss of $100m to the Japanese fishing industry

grown to sizes larger than a sumo wrestler

Climate change may be implicated in their presence, as warmer waters where they spawn near the Chinese coast have been less aerobic, allowing the tiny juvenile jellyfish to grow free from fish predators.

[edit]Extreme weather attributed to climate change was experienced in Melbourne, Australia in November 2009

Melbourne experienced:

its hottest November on record with the city's average maximum temperature of 27.6 degrees to Saturday 28/11, besting the 1862 record of 25.5 degrees for the whole of November.

10 consecutive days over 30 degrees at the start of the month set the pattern for the monthly record to fall.

November rainfall was 90.2 millimetres, well above the monthly average of 59.7 millimetres and the wettest November since 2004.

Senior weather bureau forecaster Terry Ryan said it was unusual to have the combination of the hottest November and above-average rainfall. "This is another statistic that says the Earth appears to be getting warmer," he said.

Linking levels of CO2 (ppm) and global average temperatures (referenced to pre-industrial) with sea level rise:

180ppm gives a temperature of -5C and a sea level of -120m

280ppm gives a temperature of 0C and a sea level of 0m

280-300ppm gives a temperature of 1.7 to 2.7C and a sea level of 4-6m

380 (360-400)ppm gives a temperature of 2.7 to 3.7C and a sea level of 15 to 35m

425 (350-500)ppm gives a temperature of 5.7C and a sea level of 75m

World C02 levels are now at a record high of 387 parts per million (ppm), up almost 40% since the industrial revolution and the highest for at least the last 650,000 years. This could translate to eventual sea level rises in the range of 15 to 35m, which would be catastrophic. So we need to reduce C02 emissions now.

Melburnians' daily average water consumption average in 2007 was 277 litres per person, down from 303 litres per person in 2006. This reveals a massive change in habits from the 1990s, when the average for personal use was 422 litres a day.

However, while the figure of 277 litres per day is celebrated by the Victorian State Government, it is still almost double the amount being used by residents of Brisbane and south-east Queensland, who have been limited to 140 litres per person a day since May 2007.

Americans use 100 billion plastic shopping bags a year, according to Washington-based think tank Worldwatch Institute, or more than 330 a year for every person in the country. Most of them are discarded.

They can take from 400 to 1000 years to break down,. Their constituent chemicals remain in the environment long after that.

They are made from crude oil, natural gas and other petrochemical derivatives; an estimated 12 million barrels of oil are used to make the bags the US consumes each year.

Countries from Taiwan to Uganda, and cities including Dhaka in Bangladesh, have either banned plastic bags outright or imposed a consumerlevy on them,

Britons use 13 billion single-use plastic bags a year, or more than 200 per person. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has urged the country's biggest supermarket chains to cut use faster than planned and said Britain could eliminate them altogether.

Shipping is now a booming global industry, with most manufacturing being concentrated thousands of miles from consumer centres in Europe and the United States.

Nearly 100,000 cargo ships transport 95% of world trade by sea

The world shipping industry is expanding rapidly as countries such as India and China become major players in the global economy.

The cost of shipping or "bunker" fuel has nearly doubled in the past two years, forcing the industry to consider alternatives.

Concerns have grown about climate change and air pollution from shipping.

It is estimated that commercial shipping uses nearly 2 billion barrels of oil a year and emits as much as 800 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, or 4% of the world's man-made emissions.

Shipping also releases more sulphur dioxide than all the world's cars and lorries.

The industry has so far failed to harness renewable energy, either because conventional fuel has been cheap, or because modern cargoes, mostly carried in containers, need to remain stable on deck or in holds.

Sails or spinnakers have been proposed for merchant ships, but these can take up storage space and cause vessels to keel.

Sails could pay off their cost within 3 years with oil priced at $US60 per barrel

One kite on one ship over one year would save the equivalent amount of oil as converting every single automobile in California to a hybrid

A United Nations study in 2008 has reportedly found that carbon emissions from merchant shipping are nearly three times greater than previously estimated - annual emissions from global shipping equal about 1.12 billion tonnes of CO2, or an estimated 4.5 per cent of global carbon emissions.

Emissions from merchant shipping are not taken into account by the European Union (EU) when making its targets for cutting greenhouse gases.

Antarctica , a deep freeze holding 90 percent of the world's ice, is one of the biggest puzzles in debate on global warming with risks that any thaw could raise sea levels faster than U.N. projections.

If a fraction of Antartica's ice melted, this could damage nations from Bangladesh to Tuvalu in the Pacific and cities from Shanghai to New York.

Antartica has enough ice to raise sea levels by 57 metres (187 ft) if it melted, over thousands of years.

A year after the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected sea level rises by 2100 of about 20 to 80 cms (8-32 inches), a Reuters poll of 10 of the world's top climatologists showed none think that range is alarmist.

It is estimated that a typical desktop PC with a 17-inch flat panel LCD monitor requires about 100 watts - 65 watts for the computer and 35 watts for the monitor.

If left on 24x7 for one year, this system will consume 874 kilowatt hours of electricity - enough to release 341 kg of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and the equivalent of driving 1312 km in an average car.

According to the Columbia University Guide to Green Computing, if the paper used each year for personal computing were laid end to end, it would circle the Earth more than 800 times.

The smallest of these units consumes 1kW more electricty than a solar panel array of twenty 75W panels, which produces 1.5kw. The larger unit consumes over five times the amount of energy the array produces.

The increased usage of household air conditioners is one of the major factors causing increases in peak load - usually experienced on very hot days - which is a contributing factor to the possibility of more coal fired power stations being constructed.

Data center owners such as Google are building data centers in places where power is cheap. A decade ago, the main consideration was where broadband would be cheapest. Now, data centers can take up 50,000 square meters of floor space and require 40 to 50 megawatts of power.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer espouses what the world's largest software company is doing for the environment - but the company's Xbox games console does not rate a mention in this context.

Microsoft have sold 18 million Xbox 360s sold as at March 2008.

Worldwide computer use requires 14 power stations for the necessary electricity, producing more harmful carbon dioxide emissions than the entire airline industry - not including the emissions created and manufacturing and shipping the products.

Games consoles - of which 62 million of various brands were sold in 2007 - are the high consumers of this industry, using huge amounts of energy to generate the necessary graphics and sounds.

When played online, games consoles link up to huge server farms which use even more energy.

With each generation of console - we are currently on the seventh - previous platforms are made obsolete by the newest technology. Millions of consoles, games and other accessories are thrown away.

A personal computer setup for gaming with a powerful processor and video cards can have a power supply with a peak load rating of 1kW and consume up to that amount of power.

114 million hectares of genetically modified (GM) crops is just 1.3% of the world's productive land.

98% of all GM crops are grown in just seven countries and five of those are in North and South America where most GM is used for animal feed or ethanol production.

The US alone grows over half of all GM crops

Since the GM cotton crop in Australia topped 90%, the area of cotton has fallen each year, from 230,000 hectares to 134,000 hectares, to ~65,000

in 2008. But has since increased to about 190,000ha in 2009. The area planted to cotton has very little to do with GM, its more to do with water availability. GM cotton is no magic bullet but it does help reduce the environmental impact of growing cotton.

Concerns have been raised about whether GM licences are subject to a rigorous 'science-based' assessment process.

In Australia, the ACT has a ban and GM and SA now prohibits the passage into or through its territory of any GM crop product - seed for planting, cleaning, crushing or export.

Car travel is the biggest transport source with more than 10 million trips across the city every day.

About two million trips are in the morning peak and 78 per cent of Melburnians use their cars to get to work.

11.3 per cent of Melbournians used public transport during the morning peak.

The demand for car travel is forecast to grow 30 per cent by 2031.

Taking the approximate figure of four million commute trips to and from work by car every day in Melbourne yields this information:

Number of trips: 4,000,000

CO2 per km (kg): .025 (average figure - for a Holden Commodore)

Average length of commute trip: 9km

Total CO2 emitted: 900 tonnes

A trip on a train has 1/8th the carbon emission of a trip by car, so if all these car journeys were shifted to trains, the total CO2 emissions would drop to 113 tonnes, resulting in a saving of 788 tonnes of CO2 per day.

This coal potentially generates 720 million tonnes of CO2 if all was burnt for power generation.

That means that while Australia emits approximately 20 tonnes per capita of CO2 domestically, Australia is exporting in coal terms, the equivalent of 720 million/24 million Australians = an additional 30 tonnes per capita

Electric cars are 30% more efficient (in terms of greenhouse gas emissions) than cars powered by internal combustion engines (that use petrol, diesel or gas), even taking into consideration coal-fired power generation.

Transitioning to electric drive trains for cars would reduce global carbon emissions. For those that need more range, a plug in hybrid would suffice - fuel can be used to generate electricity when needed for longer trips.